ONE event during the musicians’ strike crystallized the gulf of mistrust dividing producers from their actors, stagehands and musicians.

Standing before nearly 100 performers at the headquarters of Actors’ Equity, Bernard Plum, the producers’ lawyer, tried to convince them to cross the picket line.

If orchestra minimums are eliminated or greatly reduced, he said, “Don’t you think that we have the integrity not to replace live music with virtual orchestras?”

The answer, delivered after Plum left the room, was an emphatic “no.”

Last week’s strike showed just how little actors, stagehands and musicians trust their employers.

Like most labor-management relationships, that between producers and theater unions has had its share of rough patches. But the atmosphere today is more rancorous than anyone can remember.

“We’ve become like a dog that they keep kicking,” said one actor who was at the meeting. “And they expect us to come back for more?”

Says one theater executive: “What’s missing today is trust. The unions feel, with some justification, that the producers are out to kill them.”

A key reason for deepening mistrust is that theater owners, especially the Shuberts, have taken a diminished role in labor relations.

Producers complain that the Shuberts gave away the store to the unions, since their goal, as landlords, was to keep theaters open.

But the Shuberts maintained labor peace on Broadway – at a time when it was convulsing many other industries.

They were trusted, even respected, by the unions.

Ten years ago, a group of aggressive young producers muscled the Shuberts out of contract negotiations.

Today, management strategy is devised by corporations like Clear Channel, surrogates of super-rich producer Cameron Mackintosh and Dodgers Theatricals, which is backed by a European billionaire.

These producers are hardly in touch with the Broadway rank and file, and they are certainly not trusted by them.

They angered the musicians by threatening to use canned music in the event of a strike; they’ve infuriated actors by putting out non-union tours.

They may have mishandled their public relations campaign in the battle against the musicians, but they did achieve a 25 percent reduction in orchestra minimums.

They are furious with the actors and stagehands for supporting the musicians and will no doubt be equally as aggressive in contract negotiations with them as they were with the musicians.

The unions say they’ll fight by banding together, as they did last week.

Whether this newfound solidarity will last remains to be seen.

But if it does, it means more labor unrest on Broadway in the future.

Next year, the actors’ contract is up, and the fight over non-union tours promises to be a doozy.

CORRECTION: In last week’s column, filed poolside from the Colony Hotel in West Palm Beach, Fla., I managed to misspell Broadway producer Cy Feuer‘s first name, substituting an “s” for the “c” (I must have been suffering from sunstroke).

Movie mogul Scott Rudin, a great historian of the Broadway theater, brought the mistake to my attention.

“How could you misspell his name? It’s only got two letters,” he said.

He has a point.

By the way, he enjoyed Feuer’s new memoir, “I Got the Show Right Here,” as much as I did.

So that’s two ringing endorsements, one from a guy who can spell and one from a guy who can’t.